John Updike Quotes

What is death, after all? We leave only mortals behind us.

"When the dead are done with the living, the living can go on to other things," Franny said. "What about the dead?" I asked. "Where do we go?"

Why do people want to pretend that death is sleep? It isn't. It isn't.

Each departed friend is a magnet that attracts us to the next world.

Tell me the truth about death. I don't know what it is. We have them, then they are gone but they stay in our minds. Their stories are part of us as long as we live and as long as we tell them or write them down.

Even death has a heart.

I’ve been dead for seven years, that’s as warm as they get.

Death is but crossing the world, as friends do the seas; they live in one another still.

Could the best and kindest of us who depart from the earth have an opportunity of revisiting it, I suppose he or she (assuming that any Vanity Fair feelings subsist in the sphere whither we are bound) would have a pang of mortification at finding how soon our survivors were consoled.

For the living, death is thievery.

With the dead there is no rivalry, with the dead there is no change.

But death is not freedom. For a moment, it can look like freedom. But then it's death. Anything. Something. Nothing.

Lines I die but when the grave shall press The heart so long endeared to thee When earthy cares no more distress And earthy joys are nought to me. Weep not, but think that I have past Before thee o'er the sea of gloom. Have anchored safe and rest at last Where tears and mouring can not come. 'Tis I should weep to leave thee here On that dark ocean sailing drear With storms around and fears before And no kind light to point the shore. But long or short though life may be 'Tis nothing to eternity. We part below to meet on high Where blissful ages never die.

The dead don't stay interested in us living people for very long. Gradually, gradually, they let go hold of the earth . . . and the ambitions they had . . . and the things they suffered . . . and the people they loved. They get weaned away from the earth - that's the way I put it - weaned away.

As a kid, death seemed boring to me. As an adult, I think that it seems more like a waste of everything. Somebody once said every time a professor dies, a library burns.

I g-g-guess...I'm dead?" she heard her own voice call out, strangely high-pitched and thin. For a long time, she heard nothing else. And then: "Hi, Dead. I'm Dan.

Pity that the only way to paradise is in a hearse.

Everybody loves you when you're six foot in the ground.

I do fear death. But what I actually fear is not dying. I mean, true, it will be sad. But I know that there is a better place waiting for me.

When Time is spent, Eternity begins.

Death is no more than passing from one room into another. But there's a difference for me, you know. Because in that other room I shall be able to see.

Behind every citizen lies a graveyard.

They say that the Dead die not, but remain Near to the rich heirs of their grief and mirth. I think they ride the calm mid-heaven, as these, In wise majestic melancholy train, And watch the moon, and the still-raging seas, And men, coming and going on the earth.

The living are just the dead on holiday

You live you die and death not ends it.